God Is Always Speaking

The most mind-blowing truth I’ve ever come across as a theologian is also the simplest: God is always speaking. Always. Why is that so mind-blowing? Well, we live in a world where it often feels difficult to connect with God, to maintain a tangible relationship with an invisible being, and yet speech is precisely what we need to have a personal relationship with God!

Let’s lay out the facts for a moment: we’ve never seen our heavenly Father, Jesus left the earth over 2,000 years ago, and the Holy Spirit is . . . well, a spirit, which means we can’t see or touch him. How do we maintain a relationship with a being we cannot perceive with our senses?

The answer lies in language, in speech. God, you see, is a speaking being. Speech is part of his essential nature. Put differently, our God simply is the Father who is always speaking to the Son, who is always speaking to the Father, who is always speaking to the Spirit . . . round and round for all eternity. God speaks to himself in a profound language of love and glory, a language that transcends our imagination.

It’s this eternally speaking God who spoke the world into being (Gen. 1) and created us in his speaking image (Gen. 1:27). We were made, in other words, to speak. Just as speech is essential to who God is, it’s also essential to who we are and to how we commune with God. We are born with a disposition for communion with God, and that God is the God of communion.

We are born with a disposition for communion with God, and that God is the God of communion.

If you find yourself struggling to connect with God in our noisy world, there are two questions you can ask yourself: (1) Am I speaking to God each day in prayer? (2) Am I hearing the speech of God in Scripture, and (through Scripture) in the world that he has created? Until you have a positive answer to both of those questions, you’re not going to feel connected to God. Instead, you’ll feel distant from him. God will seem more like a fairy tale than a Father, more like a story than a Son, more like a lesson to be learned than a life-breathing Spirit to receive. The distance between us and God is a matter of interrupted communion.

But the overwhelming good news, my friends, is that God never stops offering that communion to us; he never stops speaking. The Father is always speaking the Son in the power of the Spirit, always communing with himself. And he has called you and I into that communion. That message is the lifeblood of Scripture.

So, God spoke to himself before you and I existed. He spoke to create all that we see (and don’t see). And he speaks right now to uphold all things by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3)! But even more glorious is the simple truth that the Trinity is always speaking to you and I directly in Scripture. Right now, at this very moment, there is a dialogue in session. God is patiently waiting for you to pick up the Bible, open your ears, and loosen your tongue. He has taken the initiative. He merely asks us to take our turn.

Like what you read? You might like my newest book, The Speaking Trinity & His Worded World. You can download a FREE sample chapter HERE. Or just pick up your own copy on Amazon.